October 24, 2011 09:47 PM UTC

What Scott Gessler and Katherine Harris Have In Common

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• by: Colorado Pols

That would be, according to this report from Lynn Bartels of the Denver paper’s blog this weekend, straight-up, bare-knuckles, in-your-face partisan objectives.

And control of the elections.

Bartels has a lengthy excerpt of Scott Gessler’s remarks at the GOP Capitol Club’s luncheon last week in her blog post–here are just a couple of nuggets that caught our eye.

If you look at President Obama and I think he’s perfect embodiment in many ways of sort of the liberal view. When he was asked during in the campaign about American exceptionalism, he said yeah I guess Americans are exceptional, just like the Greeks think they’re exceptional. I certainly hope were not exceptional like the Greeks with their financial problems…

So these policies have been an abject failure. What they’re doing is they are trying to change the subject, screaming hysterically over disenfranchisement or whatever they can in trying to create class warfare and start that and create racial divisions. [Pols emphasis]

I mean they’re even calling a Herman Cain a racist as well.

I think that’s what we’re facing here in this 2012 election. It’s not merely a battle for American exceptionalism and the view of freedom and free markets and personal responsibility. It truly is ‘Are we going to be able to maintain a focus on the things that matter in this country and not be sidelined or distracted by some of these things that are going on?’

That’s what I’ve learned about all this venom that’s been going on here in the state of Colorado.

We are a swing state. We are a battleground state. What happens here, what the people in this room do today and over the next year and a half, in many ways really are going to determine the fate of our country for the future… [Pols emphasis]

Coming from any other Republican, sure. Boilerplate stuff, not even that well delivered.

Coming from the state’s chief elections officer? Dismissing your critics as “hysterical” after you just lost in court to them doesn’t seem very respectful of the process. Looking ahead, and this might actually matter more, you really hope he’s able to separate these blatantly partisan aspirations from his job–otherwise this could all reasonably be interpreted…as a threat.